An immense hole opened up in the ground on Tuesday in a large Russian city near the Ural Mountains. The 30- to 40-metre-wide sinkhole looks to have swallowed several homes.

Russian geologists are searching the site for clues as to what caused the accident. The sinkhole formed shortly after a nearby salt mine flooded. That, plus a 1994 earthquake that occurred in the same region, seem to have been caused by powerful underground currents of highly-pressurized gas commonly found around salt mines.

The mine, called Solikamsk-2, churns out more than 2 million tons of potash, a potassium-rich salt used industrially as an agricultural fertilizer, each year, the Daily Mail reports.

The company who owns the mine, Uralkali, has halted production at the site, evacuated the mine, and instructed about 1,300 workers to stay home.

The same mine had previously collapsed in January 1995, causing gas explosions in surrounding areas the following day, according to the CDC. Sudden, disastrous events like these are not uncommon in salt mines of this type and can happen even if miners take all the proper precautions.

According to Russian news site V-Kurse, several homes are located nearby the sinkhole, but it remains “unknown whether there were homes in the [sinkhole’s] epicentre.”

At least one Russian Twitter-user, however, suggested homes may have been destroyed. In a tweet, Evgeny Andreev writes “Good luck cottagers,” referring to the people living in the residences in the area.

OAO Uralkali / Bloomberg A sinkhole measuring approximately 40 metres wide sits near housing at a site 3.5 kilometres east of OAO Uralkali's Solikamsk-2 potash mine near Solikamsk, Russia, on Thursday.

The driver whose car plunged and almost disappeared down a large sinkhole in Orléans two years ago is suing the city for $550,000 damages.

Juan Pedro Unger, his wife, Jennifer, and their young daughter have all filed lawsuits related to the trauma that Unger says he suffered when he became trapped in his 2009 Hyundai as it was slowly swallowed by Highway 174 on Sept. 4, 2012.

Unger, suspended by his seatbelt, managed to free himself, climb out of his car and cling to the wall of the hole before being grabbed by two passersby who hauled him to safety.

An ambulance, coincidentally passing the scene, stopped to assess Unger’s injuries as he watched his car slide further into the hole.

Courtesy of Jennifer UngerJuan Pedro Unger's 2009 Hyundai Accent after it was been removed from the sink hole he crashed into on Sept 4, 2012. Photos were taken by and supplied to the Ottawa Citizen ORG XMIT: POS2014091010442123

Courtesy of Jennifer UngerThe back seat of Juan Pedro Unger's 2009 Hyundai Accent after it was removed from an Ottawa sink hole.

The lawsuit filed by the Unger family claims that the sinkhole was caused by the collapse of a section of large metal storm-water pipe below the road and the city was negligent in not maintaining it properly.

The pipe was “severely corroded” claims the lawsuit and the city was also negligent in not warning motorists of the possible danger.

Unger suffered numerous physical and emotional injuries for which he needs ongoing therapy, claims the lawsuit

He suffered whiplash, cuts to his abdomen and legs and ongoing restricted mobility and pain in his upper body.

The trauma-induced after effects Unger suffers include sleeping difficulties, nightmares, depression, anxiety and a fear of driving.

“Mr. Unger has sustained, and will continue to sustain, psychological distress and loss of enjoyment of life,” says the lawsuit. “He is unable to participate in recreational, social and sporting activities … in particular he has been unable to enjoy recreational, social and athletic activities with his young daughter.”

The accident has caused Unger to lose income and, says the suit, added a heavy domestic load on his wife Jennifer who has been forced to take leave from work.

Ottawa Fire DepartmentA car is seen after falling into a hole on the Highway 174 off-ramp at Jeanne D'arc Boulevard in this handout photo, Tuesday, Sept. 4, 2012. Fire officials in Ottawa say a driver suffered minor injuries after a car went into a sinkhole on Tuesday afternoon. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO - Ottawa Fire Department

Two tow trucks tried to pull the bus from the sinkhole, but authorities say the bus was too heavy. A crane was brought in and hoisted the bus out of the sinkhole around 5 p.m.

Some residents in the area reported water damage in their homes, and the operators of a motel said some guests had to be moved out after water covered the bottom floor.

Authorities say the cause of the water main break hasn’t been determined, but it likely was due to the age of the infrastructure. Police say nearby light rail tracks weren’t impacted by the water and trains were still operating.

BAYOU CORNE, La. – It was nearly 16 months ago that Dennis P. Landry and his wife, Pat, on a leisurely cruise in their Starcraft pontoon boat, first noticed a froth of bubbles issuing from the depths of Bayou Corne, an idyllic, cypress-draped stream that meanders through swampy southern Louisiana. They figured it was a leaky gas pipeline. So did everyone else.

Just over two months later, in the predawn blackness of Aug. 3, 2012, the earth opened up – a voracious maw 325 feet across and hundreds of feet deep, swallowing 100-foot trees, guzzling water from adjacent swamps and belching methane
from a thousand feet or more beneath the surface.

“I think I caught a glimpse of hell in it,” Landry said.

Since then, almost nothing here has been the same.

More than a year after it appeared, the Bayou Corne sinkhole is about 25 acres and still growing, almost as big as 20 football fields, lazily biting off chunks of forest and creeping hungrily toward an earthen berm built to contain its oily waters. It has its own Facebook page and its own groupies, conspiracy theorists who insist the pit is somehow linked to the Gulf of Mexico 50 miles south and the earthquake-prone New Madrid fault 450 miles north. It has confounded geologists who have struggled to explain this scar in the earth.

And it has split this unincorporated hamlet of about 300 people into two camps: the hopeful, like Landry, who believe that things will eventually settle down, and the despairing, who have mostly fled or plan to, and blame their misery on state and corporate officials.

“Everything they’re doing, they were forced to do,” Mike Schaff, one of those who is leaving, said of the officials. “They’ve taken no initiative. I wanted to stay here. But the community is basically destroyed.”

Drawls Landry, who is staying: “I used to have a sign in my yard: ’This too shall pass.’ This, too, shall pass. We’re not there yet. But I’m a very patient man.”

The sinkhole is worrisome enough. But for now, the principal villains are the bubbles: flammable methane gas, surfacing not just in the bayou, but in the swamp and in front and backyards across the area.

A few words of fantastical explanation: Much of Louisiana sits atop an ancient ocean whose salty remains, extruded upward by the merciless pressure of countless tons of rock, have formed at least 127 colossal underground pillars.

Seven hundred feet beneath Bayou Corne, the Napoleonville salt dome stretches 3 miles long and 1 mile wide – and
plunges at least 30,000 feet to the old ocean floor.

A bevy of companies has long regarded the dome as more or less a gigantic piece of Tupperware, a handy place to store propane, butane and natural gas, and to make salt water for the area’s many chemical factories. Over the years, they have repeatedly punched into the dome, hollowing out 53 enormous caverns.

In 1982, on the dome’s western edge, Texas Brine Co. sank a well to begin work on a big cavern: 150 to 300 feet wide and four-tenths of a mile deep, it bottomed out more than a mile underground. Until it capped the well to the cavern in 2011, the company pumped in fresh water, sucked out salt water and shipped it to the cavern’s owner, the Occidental Chemical Corp.

Who is to blame for what happened next is at issue in a barrage of lawsuits. But at some point, the well’s western wall collapsed, and the cavern began filling with mud and rock. The mud and rock above it dropped into the vacated space, freeing trapped natural gas.

The gas floated up; the rock slowly slipped down. The result was a yawning, bubbling sinkhole.

“You go in the swamp, and there are places where it’s coming up like boiling crawfish,” Schaff said.
Landry agreed – “it looks like boiling water, like a big pot” – but the two men and their camps agree on little else.

Geologists say the sinkhole will eventually stop growing, perhaps at 50 acres, but how long it will take to reach that size is unclear. Under state order, Texas Brine has mounted a broad, although some say belated, effort to pump gas out of sandy underground layers where it has spread. Bayou Corne is pocked with freshly dug wells, with more to come, their pipes leading to flares that slowly burn off the methane. That, everyone concedes, could take years.

The two sides greet that news in starkly different ways.

State surveys show that one of the largest concentrations of methane lies directly under Landry’s neighborhood, a manicured subdivision of substantial brick homes, many with decks overlooking the bayou and its cypresses. Yet only two families have chosen to leave, and while the Landrys keep suitcases packed just in case, the gas detector in their home offers enough reassurance to remain.

“Do you smell anything?” he asked. “Nope. Do we have gas bubbling up in the bayou? Yes. Where does it go? Straight up. Have they closed the bayou? No.”

The anger and misfortune are focused on Schaff’s neighborhood directly across state route 70, a jumble of neat clapboard houses, less tidy shotgun-style homes and trailers on narrow roads with names like Sauce Piquante Lane and Jambalaya Street. There, rows of abandoned homes are plastered with No Trespassing signs, and the streets are deathly quiet.

Candy Blanchard, a schoolteacher, and her husband, Todd, a welder, moved out the day the sinkhole appeared. They now pay the monthly mortgage payment on their empty and unsellable 7-year-old house as well as the rent on another house.

Blanchard drops by the house each morning to feed their rabbits and cat, who have lived alone for a year because their landlord would accept only their dog.

The couple rejected an offer from Texas Brine to buy their home and instead have joined a class-action lawsuit against the company. They will never return, she said, because they do not believe the area is safe.
“The point we’re at now is what the scientists said would never happen, that this would be the worst-case scenario,” Candy Blanchard said. “How can you find experts on this when it has never happened anywhere else in the world?”

Schaff’s home also fronts the bayou, and he says he is loath to leave. But investigators found gas in his garage, he said, and he says he is convinced that state officials are playing down the true scope of the disaster.

A wry, amiable man with a salt-and-pepper goatee and glasses, Schaff said he had planned to retire on the bayou.
He could not talk about leaving without pausing to fight off tears.

“It’s my home. I want to die there, OK?” he said. “I was going to retire next year, was going to do some fishing, play with my grandchildren, do a little flying. And now, this.”

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/09/26/i-caught-a-glimpse-of-hell-in-it-massive-sinkhole-threatens-louisiana-towns-existence/feed/5stdIn this Thursday, June 27, 2013 photo, houses under a mandatory evacuation order, due to an approximate 22-acre sinkhole are seen along Bayou Corne, La. Neighbors in tiny Bayou Corne face a wrenching decision after a huge sinkhole opened up near their community: Do they stay put or should they pack up and move. The sinkhole resulted from a collapsed underground salt dome cavern about 40 miles south of Baton Rouge.Massive sinkhole swallows backhoe in downtown Montrealhttp://news.nationalpost.com/2013/08/05/massive-sinkhole-swallows-backhoe-in-downtown-montreal/
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/08/05/massive-sinkhole-swallows-backhoe-in-downtown-montreal/#commentsMon, 05 Aug 2013 21:27:13 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=347448

MONTREAL — A section of a downtown commercial street swallowed a backhoe on Monday as city crews were getting ready to repair a leaky water main.

The backhoe had started to chip at asphalt near the corner of Ste-Catherine and Guy streets when the ground crumbled beneath it and the heavy machine tumbled in.

The driver of the backhoe was not injured but was taken to hospital to be checked out as a precaution, city officials said.

Emilie Miskdjian, a spokeswoman for the Ville-Marie borough, said the city was alerted to the possible water leak on the weekend.

Residents in Seffner, Florida, got the unnerving news Monday that a second sinkhole emerged about three kilometres away from the one that swallowed a man in his bedroom last week.

“It happened to that man, it happened to our neighbour — it could happen to anyone,” said Katia Vargas. “Oh God, it’s scary.”

Geotechnical engineer John Marquardt offered little confort to residents, saying that “there is not much you can do” to prepare for a sinkhole.

“Occasionally you’ll get some warning signs, some cracking or some sloping fences,” he said.

The gaping sinkhole that swallowed resident Jeff Bush in his home last week was revealed Monday when demolition crews knock down the remaining walls and begin clearing away the debris.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVqMLBfJpNo&w=640&h=360]

Crews on Sunday razed more than half the home, managing to salvage some keepsakes for family members who lived there.

The opening of the sinkhole has been covered by the home, but once emergency officials and engineers can see inside it more clearly, they could begin planning how to deal with it. They also need to decide what will happen to the two homes on either side of the now-demolished house. Experts say the sinkhole has “compromised” those homes, but it’s unclear whether steps can be taken to save them.

Jeremy Bush, 35, tried to save his brother, Jeff, when the earth opened up and swallowed him Thursday night.

On Sunday morning, Bush and relatives prayed with a pastor as the home — where he lived with his girlfriend, Rachel Wicker; their daughter, Hannah, 2; and others — was demolished and waited for firefighters to salvage anything possible from inside. The home was owned by Leland Wicker, Rachel’s grandfather, since the 1970s.

The operator of the heavy equipment worked gingerly, first taking off a front wall. Family belongings were scooped onto the lawn gently in hopes of salvaging parts of the family’s 40-year history in the home.

As of Sunday afternoon — when demolition had stopped for the day and only a few walls remained — a Bible, family photos, a jewelry box and a pink teddy bear for Hannah were among the items saved. Firefighters also were able to pick out the purse of one of the women in the home.

NP

Cheers went up from family, friends and neighbours each time something valuable was salvaged.

Wanda Carter, the daughter of Leland Wicker, cradled the large family Bible in her arms. She said her mother and father had stored baptism certificates, cards and photos between the pages of that Bible over the years.

“It means that God is still in control, and He knew we needed this for closure,” she said, crying.

Carter said she spent from age 11 to 20 in the home, and she had to close her eyes as the home was knocked down.

“Thank you for all of the memories and life it gave us,” she said.

The Rev. John Martin Bell of Shoals Baptist Church said he had been with the family all morning. “We just prayed with them,” he said. He added that all five who lived in the house — Bush, Wicker, Hannah and two others ages 50 and 45 — were in need of support and prayers from the community.

Several generations of family members lived in the home at the time of the ground collapse, including Jeff Bush, the man now presumed dead.

Jeremy Bush tried to save his brother by jumping into the sinking dirt hole. He had to be pulled out of the still-shifting hole by a Hillsborough County Sheriff’s deputy, who was visibly shaken when talking about the incident more than a day later.

“I’ve never seen anything move so fast and do so much destruction,” Deputy Douglas Duvall said.

The search for Jeff Bush, 37, was called off Saturday. He was in his bedroom Thursday night in Seffner — a suburb of 8,000 people 24 kilometres east of downtown Tampa — when the ground opened and took him and everything else in his room. Five others in the house at the time escape unharmed as the earth crumbled.

The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office is conducting the investigation. Detective Larry McKinnon said the sheriff’s office and the county medical examiner cannot declare Bush dead if his body is still missing. Under Florida law, Bush’s family must petition a court to declare him deceased.

“Based on the circumstances, he’s presumed dead; however the official death certificate can only be issued by a judge and the family has to petition the court,” McKinnon said.

The area around Seffner is known for sinkholes due to the geography of the terrain, but they are rarely deadly. No one — from longtime public safety officials to geologists — could remember an incident where a person was sucked into the earth without warning.

SEFFNER, Fla. — Engineers worked gingerly Saturday morning to find out more about a slowly growing sinkhole that swallowed a Florida man in his bedroom, believing the entire house could eventually succumb to the unstable ground.

Jeff Bush, 37, was in his bedroom Thursday night when the earth opened and took him and everything else in his room. Five other people were in the house but managed to escape unharmed. Bush’s brother jumped into the hole to try to help, but he had to be rescued himself by a sheriff’s deputy.

Engineers began doing more tests at 7 a.m. Saturday. Crews with equipment were at the home next door, one of two that has been evacuated. By 10 a.m., officials moved media crews farther away from the Bush house so experts could perform tests on the home across the street. It’s unclear how large the sinkhole is, or whether it leads to other caverns and chasms throughout the neighbourhood. Experts say the underground of West Central Florida looks similar to Swiss cheese, with the geography lending itself to sinkholes.

Experts spent the previous day on the property, taking soil samples and running various tests — while acknowledging that the entire lot where Bush lay entombed was dangerous. No one was allowed in the home.

“I cannot tell you why it has not collapsed yet,” Bill Bracken, the owner of an engineering company called to assess the sinkhole, said of the home. He described the earth below as a “very large, very fluid mass.”

“This is not your typical sinkhole,” said Hillsborough County administrator Mike Merrill. “This is a chasm. For that reason, we’re being very deliberate.”

“It’s continuing to evolve, and the ground is continuing to collapse,” he said.

Edward Linsmier/Getty ImagesJeff Bush's cousin Kyle Balcom (L) and brother Dustin Bush react after he was consumed by a sinkhole while lying in his bed last night in Seffner, Florida.

Sinkholes are so common in Florida that state law requires home insurers to provide coverage against the danger. While some cars, homes and other buildings have been devoured, it’s extremely rare for them to swallow a person.

Florida is highly prone to sinkholes because there are caverns below ground of limestone, a porous rock that easily dissolves in water.

“You can almost envision a piece of Swiss cheese,” Taylor Yarkosky, a sinkhole expert from Brooksville, Fla., said while gesturing to the ground and the sky blue home where the earth opened in Seffner. “Any house in Florida could be in that same situation.”

A sinkhole near Orlando grew to 400 feet across in 1981 and devoured five sports cars, most of two businesses, a three-bedroom house and the deep end of an Olympic-size swimming pool.

More than 500 sinkholes have been reported in Hillsborough County alone since the government started keeping track in 1954, according to the state’s environmental agency.

Chris O'Meara/The Associated PressEngineers talk in front of a home on March 2 where a sinkhole opened up underneath a bedroom late Thursday evening and swallowed a man in Seffner, Fla.

The sinkhole, estimated at 20 feet across and 20 feet deep, caused the home’s concrete floor to cave in around 11 p.m. Thursday as everyone in the Tampa-area house was turning in for the night. It gave way with a loud crash that sounded like a car hitting the house and brought Bush’s brother running.

Jeremy Bush said he jumped into the hole but couldn’t see his brother and had to be rescued himself by a sheriff’s deputy who reached out and pulled him to safety as the ground crumbled around him.

“The floor was still giving in and the dirt was still going down, but I didn’t care. I wanted to save my brother,” Jeremy Bush said through tears Friday in a neighbour’s yard. “But I just couldn’t do nothing.”

He added: “I could swear I heard him hollering my name to help him.”

A dresser and the TV set had vanished down the hole, along with most of Bush’s bed.

Edward Linsmier/Getty ImagesA crowd gathers at the home of Jeff Bush after he was consumed by a sinkhole while lying in bed in Seffner, Florida.

A sheriff’s deputy who was the first to respond to a frantic 911 call said when he arrived, he saw Jeremy Bush.

Deputy Douglas Duvall said he reached down as if he was “sticking his hand into the floor” to help Jeremy Bush. Duvall said he didn’t see anyone else in the hole.

As he pulled Bush out, “everything was sinking,” Duvall said.

Engineers said they may have to demolish the small house, even though from the outside there appeared to be nothing wrong with the four-bedroom, concrete-wall structure, built in 1974.

Jeremy Bush said someone came out to the home a couple of months ago to check for sinkholes and other things, apparently for insurance purposes.

“He said there was nothing wrong with the house. Nothing. And a couple of months later, my brother dies. In a sinkhole,” Bush said.

A sinkhole about six-metres across and six-metres deep opened up under a man’s bedroom and swallowed him up without a trace, taking his bed, TV set and dresser, too, as he screamed for help.

Jeff Bush, 37, was presumed dead after the concrete floor caved in about 11 p.m. Thursday as everyone in the house was turning in for the night. It gave way with a loud crash that brought his brother running.

Jeremy Bush said he jumped into the hole but couldn’t see his brother and had to be rescued himself by a sheriff’s deputy who reached out and pulled him to safety as the ground crumbled around him.

“The floor was still giving in and the dirt was still going down, but I didn’t care. I wanted to save my brother,” Jeremy Bush, 36, said through tears Friday in a neighbor’s yard. “But I just couldn’t do nothing.”

He added: “I could swear I heard him hollering my name to help him.”

Chris O'Meara / The Associated PressJeremy Bush, brother of Jeff Bush, breaks down as he speaks to the media about attempting to rescue Jeff as he disappeared in a sinkhole on Friday in Seffner, Fla.

Officials lowered equipment into the sinkhole and saw no signs of life, said Hillsborough County Fire Rescue spokeswoman Jessica Damico.

The dresser and the TV set had vanished down the hole.

“All I could see was the cable wire running from the TV going down into the hole. I saw a corner of the bed and a corner of the box spring and the frame of the bed,” Jeremy Bush said.

Edward Linsmier/Getty ImagesPolice tape surrounds the house of Jeff Bush, who was consumed by a sinkhole while lying in his bed last night, in Seffner, Florida. First responders were not able to reach Bush after he disappeared and now say it is a recovery mission.

Engineers worked to determine whether the ground was stable enough to support heavy machinery to help them recover the body. They said they may have to demolish the small, sky-blue house, even though from the outside, there appeared to be nothing wrong with the four-bedroom, concrete-wall structure, built in 1974.

Florida is prone to sinkholes because below ground is limestone, a porous rock that easily dissolves in water. A sinkhole near Orlando grew to 400 feet across in 1981 and devoured property valued at $2 million, five sports cars, most of two businesses, a three-bedroom house and the deep end of an Olympic-size swimming pool.

Jeremy Bush said someone came out to the home a couple of months ago to check for sinkholes and other things, apparently for insurance purposes. “He said there was nothing wrong with the house. Nothing. And a couple of months later, my brother dies. In a sinkhole,” Bush said.

Six people were at the home at the time, including Jeremy Bush’s wife and his 2-year-old daughter. The brothers worked maintenance jobs, including picking up trash along highways.

BRANDON, Fla. — A man was missing early Friday after a large sinkhole opened under the bedroom of a house near Tampa and his brother says the man screamed for help before he disappeared.

The 34-year-old man’s brother told rescue crews he heard a loud crash around 11 p.m. Thursday, then heard his brother screaming for help.

“When he got there, there was no bedroom left,” Hillsborough County Fire Rescue spokeswoman Jessica Damico said. “There was no furniture. All he saw was a piece of the mattress sticking up.”

AP Photo/Chris O'Meara A man screamed for help and disappeared as a large sinkhole opened under the bedroom of the house, his brother said Friday.

The brother called 911 and frantically tried to help his brother. An arriving deputy pulled the brother from the still-collapsing house.

There’s been no contact with the man since then and neighbours on both sides of the Brandon home have been evacuated.

“We put engineering equipment into the sinkhole and didn’t see anything compatible with life,” Damico said. But Damico would not say that the man is presumed dead.

Damico said that at the surface, she estimates the sinkhole is about 30 feet across but officials say the sinkhole spreads to about 100 feet across below the surface. Authorities were waiting for an engineering crew to bring monitoring equipment to determine the borders of the sinkhole, she said.

“The entire house is on the sinkhole,” Damico said.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/03/01/florida-man-swallowed-by-giant-sinkhole-that-opened-under-home/feed/6stdAn engineer surveys in front of a home where sinkhole opened up on Friday.AP Photo/Chris O'MearaSinkhole erodes patience in Ottawa, void filled with humourhttp://news.nationalpost.com/2012/09/09/sinkhole-erodes-patience-in-ottawa-void-filled-with-humour/
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/09/09/sinkhole-erodes-patience-in-ottawa-void-filled-with-humour/#commentsSun, 09 Sep 2012 15:59:37 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=210694

OTTAWA — Canadians who have grumbled at tax or election time about Ottawa being a big sinkhole may well have been on to something.

The cavernous pit that suddenly appeared out of nowhere in the nation’s capital last week didn’t swallow political promises or federal tax dollars — not yet, anyway. But it did gulp down — and even seem to digest — a small car.

Juan Pedro Unger’s Hyundai Accent went headlights first into the hole, leaving him suspended by his seatbelt. Only the car’s back bumper showed above the rim of the chasm — sort of like the cars in Hollywood movies about earthquakes.

Related

One of the capital’s main traffic arteries, Highway 174, has been closed since then, wreaking commuter havoc.

“There were two big gaps with water flowing into them like a river was forming, and completely pitch black under it,” Unger told CBC Radio about what he saw.

Luckily, he wasn’t seriously hurt. But suburbanites unaccustomed to the hours-long, soul-crushing commutes of, say, Toronto or Montreal, are losing their patience. Between 9,000-11,000 Ottawa residents drive on that area of highway each afternoon rush hour.

Ottawa Fire Department / The Canadian Press

“We’ve been promoting the idea of employees working staggered hours, if any employee could start work earlier and finish earlier, that’s definitely the best thing,” said city councillor Bob Monette, whose ward sits in the eye of the storm.

“We’re also encouraging if their employer is flexible, to work from home. The least amount of cars we get on the road, the better it is.”

Experts say a half-century old stormwater culvert buried under the highway appears to have rusted out and collapsed, causing flowing water to erode the road’s foundation.

Carleton University transportation engineering professor Abd El Halim likened it to an empty egg shell. When there’s stuff inside the egg — an intact pipe, for example — the structure remains solid. But once that’s gone, the shell of asphalt can easily cave in.

There have been several other examples of sinkholes across Canada — on busy Sherbrooke Street in Montreal earlier this summer, for example.

El Halim called the 174 sinkhole a wake-up call.

“You have to go back and review all our designs underneath, all of our structures over the years, find which ones that have surpassed or are close to the end of their useful life, and fix them,” he said.

Second day of classes and I am already late for my first class. New record Hannah

“It’s easy to do that. We have equipment to tell us whether the structure is valid to carry the weight of our trucks and vehicles for the next five years. But it is a expensive process that will require a lot of manpower and a lot of time.”

A large proportion of the 3.6-metre wide replacement pipes have to be custom manufactured, meaning the highway might not be reopened for another 10 days. Meanwhile, Unger’s car was sucked further into the now swimming pool-sized hole, drifting along underground waters before it was finally pulled out Friday night.

So what’s a citizen to do to fill the, er, void? Humour seems to help.

The cave-in now has its own sassy Twitter account, (at)174sinkhole.

“It’s Friday, hoping that somebody parks a BeerStore truck close by, on a slope and leaves it in neutral,” the apparently thirsty sinkhole tweeted.

“Second day of classes and I am already late for my first class. New record Hannah,” college student Hannah Cameron tweeted.

Catch you all later, looking forward to seeing you hole-side for the pool party this afternon. #174sinkhole#sinkhole problems

Local radio stations have been having a field day. Kiss FM changed the opening lyrics to Maroon 5’s hit “Payphone,” to “I’m in a sinkhole…”

Scott Searle, a high school teacher who coaches the University of Ottawa’s softball team, said his athletes took two-and-a-half hours to make it to a practice that is usually only a 15 minute drive away.

At first, Searle said, he didn’t believe the players.

“It was kind of a crazy thing for a coach to have players show up late and then telling you that the ground fell out from underneath them — or just ahead of them — and that there’s a hole in the ground,” he said.

Below, the Post compiles what’s making headlines (and conversation) across the country

Gander

A bear cub that gained fame when it had its photo snapped with a Newfoundland RCMP officer has been killed because it was feared to be too friendly. Fish and Wildlife enforcement officers with the Department of Justice euthanized the bear on the weekend after it was seen going up to customers at the Copper Kettle Restaurant inside Terra Nova National Park, near Gander. It had already proved to be a traffic hazard on the nearby Trans-Canada Highway. The cub was made famous when its picture appeared in the St. John’s Telegram standing upright and staring at RCMP Constable Suzanne Bourque, who was unaware of its presence. Officials said they had previously trapped the cub and moved it to a more isolated spot, but it returned. As cute as the cub may have been, it was still dangerous, particularly because where there’s a cub, the mother is never far behind, said Kirby Tulk, acting resource conservation manager with the park.

Penobsquis, N.B.

Two New Brunswick farmers told a provincial hearing they’re afraid to work their land after a portion of their field collapsed into a car-sized sinkhole. Sisters Brenda Lee Morrell and Cynthia MacEwan of Penobsquis told a mining commission hearing that their well dried up and a massive sinkhole appeared in their hay field after Saskatchewan’s Potash Corporation began seismic testing in the area. The hearing is examining complaints from dozens of local residents who say their wells have also run dry and huge sinkholes opened up on their property because of the nearby mining operations.

Dorval

The City of Dorval is demanding that Air Canada repay the municipality $100,000 for an emergency tap water ban after the airline and a private contractor accidentally connected the city’s drinking water supply to a pool of stagnant water. The city said the airline and Doncar Construction Company mistakenly hooked up a water reservoir at Trudeau International Airport to the city’s water supply two weeks ago forcing its 17,000 residents to either buy bottled water or travel to a municipal distribution centre to pick up four litres a day. “People were scared…of coming to eat,” said Glen Doucet, chef at Dorval’s Restaurant Da Mangione, who says the restaurant took a $2,000 hit in lost business because of the water mix-up.

Halifax

Halifax regional council has voted not to suspend its mayor for what the city has dubbed its Cash-for-Concerts scandal. Councillor Sue Uteck introduced the surprise motion to slap Mayor Peter Kelly with a one-week suspension for his role in a questionable city deal with a concert promoter. During a raucous Tuesday meeting, councillors voted 17-3 not to suspend Mr. Kelly. “People have paid a price for this…but the mayor’s been allowed to walk free. I just don’t think it’s right,” Ms Uteck said. Several councillors complained the vote was evidence that Halifax’s regional council was self-destructing, while Councillor Debbie Hum said the municipality needs professional help. Halifax’s chief administrative officer Wayne Anstey resigned in March after admitting that the region had made unauthorized payments to concert promoter Harold MacKay for a series of shows on the Halifax Commons. The payments were made without the council’s knowledge or approval and has left the municipality with an unbudgeted liability of nearly $360,000, a municipal auditor-general’s report found. The mayor has apologized but refused to step down.

Roseville, P.E.I.

A P.E.I. man could spend up to a year in jail after pleading guilty to shooting his neighbour’s dog in a drunken rage. Joseph Benjamin Muncey Clements, 68, of Roseville pleaded guilty in May to charges of property damage, careless firearm use and willfully causing the death of a dog. His next-door neighbour, Matthew Ramsay, called police after finding his two-year-old pitbull mix shot to death on the floor of his kitchen. Mr. Clements said the dog had almost bit him more than once and when he heard it barking inside the house on May 9, he waited for his neighbour and his young son to leave before grabbed a shotgun from his vehicle, aimed it through the kitchen window and shot the dog once in the head. In a sentencing hearing this week, the Crown prosecutor pushed for six months to a year in jail for the crime, while Mr. Clements lawyer has argued for house arrest or probation, saying his client has no criminal record and lived in fear of the dog. He is to be sentenced July 5.

As if the tussle over the HST in British Columbia weren’t confusing enough, there are new concerns that the bare facts could be lost in rhetoric as two ad campaigns — one for the tax and the other against it — launched this week. B.C.’s Federation of Labour rolled out three cheeky cartoon parody ads featuring stick people having their pockets shaken out by other stick people in top hats meant to resemble ‘The Man.’ The Smart Tax Alliance, an alliance of 44 business groups, rolled out a different kind of cheeky video — a 14 minute-long bit explaining the economic ins and outs of the HST and its job creation benefits using clips of anti-HST politicians to make their point. While at least the B.C. labour federation acknowledge the potential muddiness that could come with the two opposing messages, B.C.’s finance minister wasn’t worried. “I do think that even with the complexity, and there is some complexity, that the public is a lot smarter than I think everyone gives them credit [for]”, Kevin Falcon told the CBC. “They will sift through it.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsU-E57vea0&w=620&h=379]

Edmonton

The kids at Westglen Elementary School in Edmonton have launched a “Milk Revolution” to get not only their classmates, but others in the province, country and around the world to trade chocolate and strawberry milk for white. And they have some high profile help spreading their healthy milk message: top British chef and healthy school food crusader Jamie Oliver picked up on the healthy milk class project and linked to their ‘Milk Revolution’ blog from his Twitter account. Their videos, which aim to expose flavoured milk for the sweet treat it is, have gone viral online and drew 7,500 hits to the class website within 48 hours. “It’s basically the health lesson that went terribly right,” Grade 4 teacher Adrienne Swelander told the CBC.

Saskatchewan

Thank God for muck. The RCMP in Saskatchewan were able to nab several suspects in an auto theft near Clavet, about 20km east of Saskatoon, after the vehicle they allegedly stole got stuck in a muddy farmer’s field in the municipality of Blucher. Though the suspects tried to run on foot, the tracking dog and a clutch of officers were able to run faster (maybe they had better boots?) Three underage boys and two adults from around Saskatoon could face charges including theft, flight from police, mischief and obstructing an officer.

Southeast Marine Drive remains closed between St. George and Fraser streets for the Monday morning commute as crews continue repair work on a large sinkhole that opened up across three lanes Sunday afternoon.

Motorists are advised to make alternative plans via Fraser (for westbound traffic) and Main for eastbound traffic). Electronic sign boards have been installed along the street to caution drivers heading in both directions.

Bus service is also being disrupted. The No. 8 terminates at 49th Avenue and Fraser, while the 100, which travels along SE Marine, is rerouting around Fraser and Main, according to TransLink.

Fortunately no one was hurt when the hole opened up on Sunday. The cause of the hole isn’t immediately known but some locals suspect a nearby water main might be partially to blame.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/12/13/sinkhole-causes-traffic-headache-in-south-vancouver/feed/0stdGiant sinkhole in Guatemala looks as if it goes to centre of the Earthhttp://news.nationalpost.com/2010/05/31/giant-sinkhole-in-guatemala-looks-as-if-it-goes-to-centre-of-the-earth/
http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/05/31/giant-sinkhole-in-guatemala-looks-as-if-it-goes-to-centre-of-the-earth/#commentsTue, 01 Jun 2010 02:06:51 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=7617

The sinkhole is a result of rainwater saturating the ground after tropical storm Agatha. The image is not a photoshop-job (see other angles of the sinkhole below) despite looking as if a giant hole had been punched in the Earth.

Family photo, used with permission of Louisette CharbonneauRichard Prefontaine, and his wife, Line Charbonneau, on their wedding day years ago.

Family photo, used with permission of Louisette CharbonneauRichard Prefontaine and his wife, Lyne Charbonneau

The mother of Line Charbonneau, the woman who was swallowed by a sudden landslide in Quebec, says the family knew of the risks of building a home so close to a creek. Richard Préfontaine built his family home by hand with the help of family and friends.

The family was curled up in their basement television room watching a hockey game when the ground beneath their country home shifted; some of the bodies were still on the couch when they were finally found beneath the rubble last night. Plans for a vigil are now being made; the memorial will replace the town’s celebration of its 175th birthday this weekend.

The family was curled up in their basement television room watching a hockey game when the ground beneath their country home shifted; some of the bodies were still on the couch when they were finally found beneath the rubble last night. Plans for a vigil are now being made; the memorial will replace the town’s celebration of its 175th birthday this weekend.

“A family of four is missing on Tuesday morning after a huge sinkhole opened up and a house and a truck fell inside it in St. Jude, about 77 kilometres northeast of Montreal near St. Hyacinthe, Que.”

The home, located in the pastoral farmland about 75 kilometres outside of Montreal, disappeared into the sinkhole’s gaping maw around 9:30 p.m. Monday. The missing family is a mother and father in their forties and their two children, aged nine and 11. Residents identified the father as Richard Prefontaine.

Unconfirmed reports suggested that the family was in their basement when the house was swept away. Rescuers found the family dog , which according to a police spokesman had been tied to a tree outside the home and survived the slide.

Search and rescue dogs that entered the home this morning but did not find any signs of life, said National Post reporter Graeme Hamilton, who is at the scene:

“They haven’t given up hope. They’ve still got ambulances standing by. There have been lots of examples of natural disasters where, for one reason or another, people aren’t able to communicate but end up being found.”

Herman Gagnon, a neighbour, tells Canwest News Service that he heard a loud, mysterious groan last night. He initially thought it was an earthquake. After calling a neighbour, he hopped in his car and drove towards St. Jude:

“In front of him lay ‘a different kind of blackness,’ Gagnon recounted yesterday, at a security perimeter erected two kilometers from the sight of the sinkhole.

Gagnon has stopped at the edge of a giant precipice and found himself staring into the abyss.”

Rescuers have been calling the father’s cellphone; last night, they heard it ringing inside the home, which now looks like this:

Phil Carpenter/Canwest News ServiceA crater measuring about 1 kilometer by 500 meters that swallowed at least one house in St Jude north east of Montreal.

The house once looked like this:

Courtsey Google StreetviewThe home before it was swept away in a landslide.

Rescuers were first alerted to the disaster by a man who drove his truck into the sinkhole. He called for help on his cellphone and managed to walk away from the scene. He is being treated in hospital for non-life-threatening injuries. It took André Cartier more than an hour to pull himself out of his red pickup truck and climb up the edges of the enormous crater the landslide left in its wake. From the Montreal Gazette:

“Bleeding from his head, face and legs, it had taken Cartier almost an hour to get out of his vehicle and drag himself out of the crater – estimated at 40 metres deep, 400 metres long and 600 metres wide – and make his way to Lanoie’s house.

When Lanoie and his wife, Louise Leblanc, opened their door and saw Cartier standing there, they couldn’t imagine what had happened.

Cartier, who is in his 60s, turned and pointed north on Rang Salvail. His first words weren’t about his injuries; they were a warning to others: ‘No one should go there! The road has disappeared! And a house has disappeared into it!'”

The Gazette/Phil CarpenterA car sticks out of a crater measuring about one kilometre by 500 meters that swallowed at least one house in St Jude north east of Montreal, Tuesday May 11, 2010.

Officials say the damage is the result of a landslide, not a sinkhole and point out there is a difference between the two. Didier Terret, research scientist for the Geological Survey of Canada, said a landslide of this magnitude happens approximately one to two times per year in the St. Lawrence Valley, but normally in areas that have no infrastructure (smaller ones are more frequent and most of the time do not garner much attention).

Quebec ranks third in the world in terms of landslide-susceptible regions, according to Michel C. Doré, a spokesman.for Quebec’s civil security agency.

Canwest News ServiceAmélie Préfontaine, 12, top, and Anaïs Préfontaine, 9, died along side their parents in a landslide.

The Préfontaine family gathered in front of their basement television Monday evening to watch the Habs face off against the Pittsburgh Penguins in Game Six of the playoffs. Relatives said they were big fans and would have been most definitely cheering the team on from their home in Saint-Jude, Quebec.

Like thousands of other families across the country, they had probably just cheered Michael Cammalleri and Jaroslav Spacek’s goals halfway into the second period, when the score was still 3-2 Canadiens when the earth moved.

At about 9:30 p.m., a landslide swept the Préfontaine home about 30 metres from where it stood and sucked it into a nine metre-deep hole filled with mud. When their bodies were pulled from the basement yesterday evening, at least two of them still sitting on the family couch.

Related

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/05/12/family-swallowed-by-sinkhole-watched-montreal-canadiens-play-hockey/feed/2stdAmélie Préfontaine, 12, (top) and Anaïs Préfontaine, 9, died along side their parents in a landslide.